Peter Harcourt, a much-loved former Carleton professor known as the “father of Canadian film studies”, died at the Ottawa General Hospital on July 3. He was born in Toronto on July 26, 1931. As unassuming as he was talented, Peter combined his two great loves — film and Canada — in his teaching, writing and mentoring of almost all the figures who are important in Canadian cinema today.

The serious attention paid to Canadian film at the Toronto International Film Festival owes much to his influence, and his books — Six European Directors: essays on the meaning of film style (1974), Movies and Mythologies: towards a national cinema (1977), Jean-Pierre Lefebvre (1981) and Cinema Québec: A Distinctly Cultural Voice (1983) — and many articles are still indispensable guides to the history and art of cinema, especially in Canada. In 2005, these contributions were recognized when he was made a member of the Order of Canada.

Peter’s passion for film grew out of a background in music and literature. As a student at Bloor Collegiate in Toronto and later at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, he played a mean jazz trumpet, even jamming with Moe Koffmann on one memorable occasion.

In 1953, the founding year of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, he was hired to help train the onstage drummers and to work as an extra. There he met Alec Guinness, who suggested to him that he was a writer at heart. Soon Peter had sold his trumpet and sailed for England with $200 in his pocket. There, after hearing a lecture by the great literary critic F.R. Leavis, he prepared on his own for the entrance exams to Cambridge University, passed them, and studied with Leavis for the next two years.

Under Leavis’s influence he began to develop the humanistic approach and attention to the relationship between art and the society it comes out of that would later characterize his writings on film. In the late 1950s, by then married and the father of two children, he discovered the films of Ingmar Bergman. Soon he was preparing a series on Bergman for the BBC and lecturing around the country on the new auteur cinema and on music in film. Working at the British Film Institute in the 1960s, he came across some early documentaries made by the National Film Board of Canada. In them he found a reflection of himself — his tentativeness, reserve and tendency toward detachment — and recognized that he was Canadian. It was time to go home.

And return home he did: first to Queen’s University in 1967, where he set up a Film Studies department and a small film company, Quarry Films, then to York University in 1974 and finally, in 1978, to Carleton. By then, his name had become synonymous with a new excitement about Canadian cinema. The left-wing nationalism of the 60s and 70s had made Canadians aware that they had a culture worth exploring, and Carleton, with its prestigious Institute of Canadian Studies and vibrant courses in Canadian and Québécois literature, political science and history, was at the heart of that new awareness.

Within a year of Peter’s arrival, two of his graduate students in Canadian Studies had started a Friday evening series of Canadian films (with the filmmakers in attendance) that drew huge crowds, evenings that often ended up with a party at Peter’s house on Roslyn Avenue. In addition to his teaching in those years, Peter was preparing a series on Canadian film for CBC Radio’s “Ideas” program, as well as retrospectives on Max Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard for the Toronto International Film Festival and on Jean-Pierre Lefebvre and other Québécois filmmakers for the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa. He was constantly networking with creators and promoters of Canadian and Québécois film across the country. Reflecting later on the frantic pace of his life in those years, he wondered how he had had the nerve to throw himself into so many things, often improvising as he went along.

In Peter’s moving and important memoir A Canadian Journey: Conversations With Time, published in 1994, he recalls a graduate course he taught in Carleton’s Institute of Canadian Studies on Canadian thinkers such as Harold Innis, Donald Creighton and George Grant, all of whom articulated a Canadian vision distinct from that of the United States. Peter belongs in that pantheon and will be remembered for his contribution to that vision, as well as for his nurturing of his students and his talent for friendship. He was always interested in listening to others and passionate about what they were doing and thinking — the qualities that make for a great teacher, critic and friend.

Patricia Smart is a Distinguished Research Professor and Chancellor’s Professor Emerita at Carleton University

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Market to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.